Wallace holding fast to a dream

KIRKLAND — There were only about 25 guys on the high-school team in Seneca Wallace's senior season.

Rancho Cordova won two games that year. Maybe. Wallace can't quite be sure, but his junior-college coach remembers clearly what he saw.

"Half of the snaps he would take as a quarterback, he was looking at a team picture by the time the ball hit his hands," said Dave Griffin, who coached Wallace at Sacramento City College. "Not his own team, but the other team's picture.

"It was like Forrest Gump. 'Run Seneca, run.' "

And Wallace can run. He was timed running 40 yards in 4.4 seconds in junior college on a day he forgot his running shorts. But Griffin measured Wallace's prospects by more than just his fleet feet. More than the size of Wallace's arm, too. Griffin was convinced Wallace would be a successful quarterback by the look on his face each time he came back to the huddle for that high school team that was oh-so bad.

"He would just take a licking, and he didn't get frustrated," Griffin said. "He just kind of took it in stride. I think it's different than an attitude. It's more of a personality with him."

It was that personality that put Wallace at quarterback and kept him there as he traveled a path that was neither straight nor easy. Wallace has had people try to talk him out from under center ever since high school.

Through it all he has been steadfast. He spent his first season out of high school stocking an airport magazine stand and the next two years playing at junior college. He spent his first two years in the NFL as the Seahawks' third-string understudy. In 2005, he took classes to improve his study skills and is in his second season as Seattle's top backup. And on Sunday, Wallace will start his first NFL game at a position that has been a matter of perseverance at times.

"All my life I've had to prove to people," Wallace said. " 'You can't play this position. You're too short.' I just stuck with it and the coaching staff stuck with me."

Beaver believer

Wallace first went to college not to throw passes, but to defend them. He headed to Oregon State not as a quarterback, but as a cornerback in 1998.

"That's how smart we were," coach Mike Riley joked.

Coach laughs now and loves seeing the success Wallace has had under center. Wallace was on the Corvallis campus in August 1998, and participated in practices before the season. He didn't end up enrolling because he was one class short of meeting the academic standards for a scholarship and appeals on his behalf were denied. But Riley said Wallace had played his way into consideration as a starting cornerback, and he really excelled in the impromptu skills competitions after practice.

"He would win everything," Riley said. "He could it throw it further, punt it better. He was just the best athlete."

But after he was ruled ineligible, Wallace went back home to California and got a job rising before the sun, restocking the magazine counters at Sacramento's airport. He went one season without playing football.

He began attending Sacramento City College, and in 1999 he was a backup quarterback who was thrown into the starting lineup by an injury. He has been under center ever since, going from Sacramento to Iowa State in January 2001 and playing two seasons for the Cyclones.

"He has tremendous skills and athleticism," said Dan McCarney, who coached Wallace at Iowa State. "He did some things throwing the football here that I had never seen before."

Professional pessimism

The official scorebook from the game lists it as a 12-yard touchdown run.

In truth, Wallace traveled about 80 yards for a score against Texas Tech that lasted 17 seconds from start to finish his senior year in 2002.

"It was one of the most exciting plays I've ever seen," McCarney said.

That athleticism was a selling point for the NFL, but plays like that also convinced some teams he would fit some place other than the pocket.

"When you watched his college film, he was very productive," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said. "But you didn't see as much straight drop back, some of the things that some teams do."

Wallace is 5 feet 11, which is short for the prototype of passers. Charlie Casserly was the general manager for the Texans at the time, and he said Wallace needed to consider a position change to make the NFL. After Wallace did not participate in wide-receiver drills at the league's annual scouting combine, he was critical.

"I think the young man is missing something here," Casserly said, according to the Forth Worth Star-Telegram. "I think either he should go to Canada, or I think he ought to realize that he ought to look to play another position and be a dual-position player in the NFL."

The pessimism was unusually personal. Professionally, it never caused him to doubt what position he would play in the NFL. The Seahawks drafted Wallace in the fourth round in 2003, convinced he would play quarterback.

"He was always going to be a quarterback," Holmgren said. "And that's the position he should play."

And when Wallace starts in Kansas City on Sunday, it will just be his next opportunity to prove to people it's where he belongs.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com